Questions applied to strategy, narrative, policy, and public life.
Begin an inquiryPhilosophical analysis, applied to questions of public life.
A small advisory practice. Engagements are shaped to the question; scope and method are sized to the matter.
A short intake establishes scope, objectives, and timeline — and is vetted for legality and fit before anything is accepted. Where a fit emerges, the practice proposes; where it does not, the practice declines.
FoundationsIdea and Situation
Start from intuition, move to analysis. Break complex problems into simple ones. Rank truths by how sure we are of them. Then reason forward, drawing on history, philosophy, and ethics, to make the case.
Thought, Structure & NarrativeThe matter in front of us and the analytical work itself
Decision briefs, assessment memoranda, decision matrices, and narrative reviews. Where the matter requires it, written work is supported by direct, informed counsel — discussion grounded in what the work has shown.
Intervention, implementation, actionCounsel that bears on what is done
A confidential session to work through a position, an argument, or a course of action with someone whose job is to think it through with you. The conversation is the service — testing the reasoning, asking the questions that have not yet been asked, and staying with the matter until it is clear.
By appointment — often the simplest way to start. Lay out the matter; get close reading and honest thought in return.
Continued conversation as the matter develops, held to your question over time.
Held in confidence. Written notes only where requested. For leaders, executives, legislators, and counsel who want an outside mind with no stake in the conclusion.
For campaigns, legislators, executives, and causes — companies and marketing programs included where the question is positional, not merely tactical.
What it is the principal actually stands for, expressed in language a third party would recognize as the principal's own.
The story that explains the position — its history, its stakes, its reasons — written so others can repeat it without getting it wrong.
The reasoning the position rests on — drafted to be defensible under cross-examination, not merely sufficient to be repeated.
The order of operations and the instruments of intervention — what comes first, what is held in reserve, and what separates this position from those nearby it.
A narrative is the account that holds in press, in court, before regulators, and before the public it must serve. The practice is available for its development, review, and stress-testing.
What This CoversFull simulation of situations and organizations — a negotiation, a crisis, a contested public moment; a ministry, a board, a company, an opposing campaign — stood up as a working model and run in earnest. Conducted with or without technology, and with or without outside participants, as the engagement warrants. The purpose is preparation: to test decisions, anticipate disruption, and surface what the institution does not yet know, before it costs anything to learn it.
Scenarios run in earnest — crises, negotiations, regulatory actions, political contests, and organizational decisions — with roles, pressures, and consequences constructed from the principal's actual position.
A governmental body, business organization, or counterparty modeled as a working whole — its offices, incentives, and decision paths played through, so the principal can see how it behaves before dealing with the real one.
Scenario design, injects, and the control of the exercise itself — umpired against the facts, documented as it runs, with the after-action reading written for the principal.
From a room and a set of roles to AI-supported environments; run with the principal's own people or staffed with outside participants as the matter requires. Built for the engagement alone; what is made for one principal is never reused for another.
Every engagement is vetted at intake for legality and fit; the practice declines what it should.
Where an exercise needs equipment, credentialed specialists, or outside participants, the practice sources and structures it — scoped to the engagement, not to a fixed menu. Fees are set by scope, after assessment of the engagement.
A reading of the organization as a working process, not a sector diagram — its decision paths, its internal politics, and the conditions under which its people and its public actually form belief and consent. Offered to inform a decision, not to confirm one already taken.
How decisions actually move through the organization — where authority sits on paper and where it sits in practice, and where the process breaks down.
How belief, consent, and legitimacy actually form inside the institution or the public it answers to — not what people say they believe, but how that belief is built and moved.
Custom-designed instruments for the specific question — built for the organization or population in front of us, not bought as a commodity product.
Small-batch, qualitative sessions designed around the actual audience, read alongside the numbers rather than instead of them.
Findings are delivered in writing, with the reasoning shown. Where relevant, oral briefing accompanies the document. Commissioned for the principal alone unless otherwise scoped.
For boards, companies, technology innovators, lawmakers, and individuals.
Wherever a decision needs more perspective than the tools at hand can give — from routine matters to the consequential ones. The aim isn't to have an answer for everything, but to ask the right questions toward a course of action that can be defended.
A reading against frameworks of reasoned ethics and sound argument — whether what you propose can be defended, in principle.
Useful before consequential decisions, or when competing values must be weighed.
A reader's review of written works — logical consistency, evidential basis, fitness for purpose. Whole texts or argument structures.
Commissioned prepublication, for editorial decision-making, for translation suitability, or as critical engagement with a completed work.
Most of the practice's work happens under time pressure. Commissioned research is the counterweight — longer-form briefings that bring philosophical foundations, concepts, ethics, and history to bear on a pressing matter. For institutions, legislators, candidates, counsel, and executives.
Same approach, written form. Specialist consultation engaged where the matter requires it.
The moral and ethical structure beneath a decision or course of action — its commitments, what they entail, what they exclude — examined on its own terms before being applied to the matter at hand. A structured briefing, suited to use under time constraint.
The concepts the matter rests on — clarified, distinguished, and tested. Often the disagreements in a debate are not about facts but about what the terms mean. Conceptual work surfaces the terms in play, traces their genealogies, and shows where the load is actually being carried. Particularly useful where novel matters or contested usage obscure the argument.
Comparable situations from the institutional, sectoral, or political record — drawn for conclusions applicable to policy in its full range: foreign, domestic, security, legislative, executive. Examines what was decided, what was avoided, and what the experience suggests about the options presently before you. Read against present conditions, with attention to disanalogy as well as analogy.
Philosophical foundations of a legal or political discourse — frequently inaccessible to those debating and inhabiting the issues — surfaced so that the dynamics, relations, origins, and conclusions of a pressing matter can be seen.
The work proceeds by a few standing methods, applied as the matter requires.
Returning to what the matter rests on before considering what has been built atop it.
Separating concepts that look identical and treating them as the different things they are.
Tracing how a term, frame, or institution came to its present form, and what that history continues to commit it to.
Stating the opposing position in its strongest form before testing it. An argument that prevails over a weak version of its opponent has not yet been tested.
Testing a principle or a proposed course at its edges — the extreme cases, the unusual applications, the moments when the rule meets its hardest test.
Surfacing the unstated assumptions an argument depends on, and asking whether they are still warranted.
Systematic doubt: setting aside what is not yet warranted, proceeding from what is, building only with what can carry weight. Four steps: accept only what is clearly known; divide each problem into its parts; reason from the simplest part forward; review the whole until no part is left unexamined.
Subjecting a proposed position, action, or argument to an established framework — ethical, legal, conceptual, procedural — to see what it survives and what it does not.
A catalogue of the work the practice undertakes, drawn on for a given engagement as the matter requires. Where a matter needs credentialed expertise beyond the practice, outside specialists are engaged.
Novanglus is a young practice, deliberately narrow. What follows is the actual range of the work — reflection, argument, and simulation, done personally, not produced at scale.
A first conversation, by appointment — the simplest way to start. Described in full under Consultation, above.
Analysis of the concepts a matter rests on — what a term covers, what it excludes, and its implications carried through. Useful where the term in use quietly determines the answer.
Formal models for situations, decisions, and plans — variables defined, premises laid out, options compared, consequences carried through. A written model the principal can use, revise, or hand to a team.
Considered reflection on new technologies, working methods, and the institutional practices around them — whether what is being built is defensible against principle.
Conceptual work on legitimacy, authority, and representation across the history of political thought. Inquiry into the concepts themselves; not assessment of specific actors or regimes.
Reflection with parties contemplating public action that carries moral weight — what the act commits the principal to, and whether the principal is prepared to bear what follows. Not communications counsel.
Inquiry into how political belief and consent are actually formed under present conditions — and where the assumptions a position depends on are no longer held by those it would address.
Field research in the digital environments where contested matters are argued — how the populations of interest understand the matter, and where the discourse is moving.
Review of the philosophical premises and conceptual frames of an argument with legal dimensions; the legal substance remains with counsel. Engaged through and at the direction of counsel of record.
Custom-designed polling and digital survey instruments, built for the specific organization or population — not a commodity product.
Small-batch, qualitative sessions designed around the actual audience, read alongside the numbers rather than instead of them.
Specific instances from the record — legal transformations, contested events, institutional moments — that bear on a present challenge with no obvious modern comparison.
A present matter situated within longer historical context — comparable situations, their outcomes, and what the experience suggests, with attention to disanalogy as much as analogy.
How a given historical person might have approached the principal's problem — a reading, not a translation; relevance shown rather than asserted.
Plausible futures, decision fault lines, and operational choke points — written to remain defensible when revisited months or years later.
Construction and adversarial testing of arguments — where an argument is strong, where it is weak, and where it will fail under cross-examination.
What a policy actually does, where it shifts authority and resources, and what response options remain to the principal. Diagnostic, prepared for decision.
How decisions actually move — where authority sits, where bottlenecks form, where dissent is filtered out. A written diagnostic the principal can act on.
Moderated, documented working sessions — to lay out the arguments in full, close a debate within a defined period, or finalize a decision matrix without distraction.
A defensive review of the communications record — where the public footprint is exposed to misreading, attack, or future contradiction. Diagnostic, not active counsel.
Counsel on engagement under pressure — how to engage, what to say, when to stay silent — with drafting and rehearsal. Media relationships are not maintained on the engaging party's behalf.
How the institution's narrative reads under hostile coverage and opposition argument — what it claims, what it omits, and where it is vulnerable. Conducted ahead of high-stakes moments.
Contingency frames, decision triggers, and response options considered in advance — so the principal acts from prepared ground when the contingency arrives.
Debates, hearings, drills, and tabletop sessions — the matter practiced under pressure before it occurs in real conditions. Custom exercise design described under Simulation, above.
One-on-one preparation for debates and contested exchanges — likely lines of attack, response framing, and the discipline of staying on argument under pressure.
Preparation of those speaking on a principal's behalf — message discipline, anticipated questions, and clarity on the limits of what the surrogate is authorized to say.
Strategic, intellectual, and philosophical counsel for political organizations and NGOs — from the founding question (what the organization is for, how it argues, what it would not do) to present operational decisions.
Advisory-led development of bespoke software and AI-supported instruments, scoped to the specific question — built to be used within the engagement, not maintained as product.
Continuous monitoring, open-source aggregation, and briefing on policy and market signal — cadence and depth fitted to what the principal can actually use. Conducted in-house.
For an introductory inquiry, complete the form below. Share only what you are comfortable sharing at the outset. The practice responds with a candid assessment of fit and, where appropriate, a proposal for engagement.
Novanglus, or New Englander, was John Adams's pen name for the constitutional essays of 1774–1775. Written in answer to the Tory position articulated under the pen name Massachusettensis, the essays were a first step toward clarifying and distilling the aspects of law and loyalty intrinsic to the decisions of the American Revolution — argument from principle, clearly stated, addressed to those who must hear it.